Despite pleas, Grand Rapids airport won’t yet test homes for PFAS

“GRAND RAPIDS, MI — A neighbor to Gerald R. Ford International Airport says groundwater contamination concerns at the air transit hub are causing nearby residents to worry about their health and property values.

Scott Baldwin, a resident of the Thornapple neighborhood just northeast of the airport, asked officials to remember their neighbors during their probe into possible contamination by fire suppressant chemicals.

‘As a neighbor I’m also really concerned that the use of those products has had impact on the environment,’ said Baldwin, one of several people who addressed the airport board at their meeting on Wednesday, May 30.

Ford Airport has dug monitoring wells and sampled soils around a former firefighting training area to determine if past use of aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) has contaminated groundwater with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

But the airport says it won’t sample nearby homes for PFAS before results of airport property testing come back this summer, despite private residential test results that show some nearby drinking water wells do contain PFAS…

Airport CEO James Gill said wells can have built-in sources of PFAS contamination and indicated there could be false positive results…

Ford Airport’s test results aren’t expected back until June, and airport officials say they’re withholding them from the state for nearly a month afterward to ensure accuracy.